Page 4
News
Street Roots • July 15-21,2016
Conversations about the serious
SHORTAGE
of treatment beds for Oregon’s
YOUTHS
BY EMILY GREEN
STAFF WRITER
t’s been six months since an Oregon
Judicial Department task force quietly
released a report outlining troubling
shortfalls in the state’s placement and
treatment of children with mental health
needs in its custody.
Most pressing, it was revealed, is that
some juveniles with severe mental health
needs are being warehoused in correctional
facilities when there are no treatment beds
available.
The majority, 73 percent, of juvenile
court judges surveyed across Oregon
indicated they’d been forced to commit one
or more youths suffering from mental health
disorders to a juvenile detention facility
during the prior year simply because there
was nowhere else to send them. One judge
committed more than 20 juveniles to
detention facilities for this reason.
It’s a situation that’s “probably only
gotten worse since we began our
discussions,” Nan Waller, task force co-chair
and Multnomah County Circuit Court
presiding judge, told attendees of a July 6
task force meeting in Salem via speaker
phone.
The task force’s last mandated meeting
was in January, when it adopted its final
report, but members indicated the issues
they discovered were too important to leave
unresolved, and they decided to meet again
this summer to discuss ongoing efforts to
drive solutions.
In the months since, their agenda has
moved forward, but slowly.
While the extent of the treatment bed
shortage appears to be significant based on
surveys of caseworkers and judges across
the state, the number of additional beds
needed is unknown. This is because,
traditionally, statewide data haven’t been
tracked and mental health screening isn’t
consistent among counties.
Task force staffer Megan Hassen told
meeting attendees there was a possibility of
getting an appropriation to analyze this data
so the task force would be able to formulate
a specific request it could take to the
I
with mental health disorders are
moving forward. But progress is
their prescription plans are subject to
varying levels of protections.
These problems, along with treatment
shortages, are anything but new.
Mark McKechnie, director of Youth,
Rights & Justice, said he’s been working on
many of these issues for 10 years or longer.
“The issues addressed in the report are
things that we’ve been concerned about for
a very long time,” he said, “and many of the
recommendations are repeats of
recommendations that have been made
previously.”
At the July task force meeting, Paula
Bauer, a treatment services program
manager at Oregon Youth Authority,
expressed frustration with the declining
services available.
In 2014, Oregon Supreme Court Chief
“If you compare the size of the system in
Justice Thomas Balmer convened the
the
1990s to the population of kids we were
Juvenile Justice Mental Health Task Force in
response to the increasing number of youths serving then, and compare the size of the
system now to the population of kids we’re
with mental illness within Oregon’s juvenile
serving now,” she said, “there’s a deficit of
justice system and concerns about the
services.”
system’s inadequacies.
Furthermore, she said there is no
After a year of research and deliberation,
program
designed to serve the most .
members of the task force including
challenging kids in the system - severely
representatives from Oregon Judicial
traumatized juveniles who act out repeatedly
Department, Oregon Health Authority,
Oregon Youth Authority, and advocacy group and have difficulties keeping their
placements.
Youth, Rights & Justice released their
One proposal on the table would be to
report on Feb. 4.
start a pilot program that would serve about
Statewide, the report found, the shortage
24 youths in this category, and it’s a
of both residential and emergency beds for
proposal the task force is considering.
youths in mental health crisis has led not
“The 24 beds we’re proposing is a tiny
only to youths’ being sent to detention
drop in the bucket,” Bauer said, “but they
centers instead of getting needed mental
won’t go unused.”
health treatment, but also numerous
While the bureaucratic process toward
incidents of child welfare workers’ staying
allocating more resources inches along,
overnight in their offices or hotel rooms
there are traumatized youths sitting in
with youths while they search for more
juvenile detention facilities because they
suitable arrangements.
have mental health care needs that are not
This scenario is mirrored in the state’s
being met.
foster care system, and Richardson said that
A spokesperson for Gov. Kate Brown’s
no more than 12 children at any given time
office, Bryan Hockaday, said Brown is fully
are being housed in hotel rooms with two
aware of the problem.
state employees - an expensive temporary
“The governor is very concerned about
solution.
the
immediate need that children in Oregon
The task force’s report also indicated that
and families are facing,” he said.
as youths bounce between the care of
Task force members met with the
different state agencies, their service
providers and medications often change,
See TASK FORCE, page 5
their medical records don’t follow them, and
TOO SLOW
to keep up with rising demand.
Oregon Legislature.
“I also heard from judges that we don’t
have time for that,” she said, noting that
juvenile court judges say they have youths
on their dockets right now who need
treatment services that aren’t available.
In the months since the report’s release,
the shortage of placements in treatment
facilities has been compounded by the
Oregon Department of Human Service’s
increasing loss of foster care beds at a time
when it was already coming up short.
Its interim director, Reginald Richardson,
said at the same meeting that his
department has lost 400 beds in family-run
foster homes over the past two years, and
it’s lost more than 100 beds in residential
facilities over the past 12 months.
He attributed the loss of foster families to
his agency’s failure to “be a good partner”
to foster parents. He said several factors
have contributed to the loss: not including
foster parents as part of the team, the
agency’s history of removing children from
foster homes with “very little notice,”
placing challenging children who previously
would have been placed in residential
treatment facilities or a higher level of care
into family homes, and not being
transparent with foster parents about their
needs.
“Our best recruiters were our foster
parents,” Richardson said, “and they are
speaking with their legs: They’re walking
away from us.”